


how to get your start in underworld crime

by Herbluvsdan



Category: Lupin III
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-05-02 20:00:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5261573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Herbluvsdan/pseuds/Herbluvsdan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>jigen finds himself some work</p>
            </blockquote>





	how to get your start in underworld crime

Daisuke Jigen was 16.

But, by then, he wasn't yet Daisuke Jigen. He had no name, and he needed no name. All he needed was enough to survive and that satisfied him enough.

He was not yet the best shot ever seen. He had some skill, though, and was still quite infamous.

He had no beard, just stubble, messy and dark and uneven.

He didn't have a job. He didn't have a home. He didn't have a school to go to.

Daisuke Jigen was 16.

He was smoking in an alley, money all spent on that last pack of Pall Mall, waiting for his next mark to come walking along. A little more cash, he thought, and he could buy some food, and maybe he wouldn't starve to death in some alley. God knows nobody would show up to the funeral. Who would host the candle-light vigil? Who would watch his coffin descend down into the earth? Nobody, that's who, and he knew it well. He had it reinforced near daily. The people of New York looked down on people like him; in his mind, he thought it right. 

(And he hated himself for it, but didn't he hate himself for everything? Because hell, maybe the snobs who pass by and curse at him or spit on him are right and maybe he should just go get a job or die or something just like they suggest.)

He blew smoke as a woman passed him by. She looked frantic and lost. Didn't she know this was a bad neighborhood to be walking around in? Especially at night? Especially when you're a woman? Especially when you've got a purse that big and heels those high? He took another puff of his cigarette and remembered how a lion stalks its prey. He learned that in fifth grade, when his teacher made the class watch a video on predators. 

They watch the pack for the wounded and the weak. (Those heels were getting awfully strenuous on her ankles; by this point she was limping.)

They stalk them through the fields. (Through the back alleys, and sometimes in the open, Jigen followed her, trying to look as unassuming as possible, but he knew she knew anyway. She looked smart enough.)

They come just close enough to the other creature. (By now, he quietly stalked behind her, just to the side as if to pass her, and he could practically smell her fear.)

And then, they strike. (He just wanted the purse, nothing else, just a purse, how bad could it be?)

He grabbed onto the bottom of the bag and pulled. She screeched like a wild banshee and clawed at him, tugging back. He won the fight and had the bag in his arms, but when he turned to run, she grabbed the collar of his second-hand suit and yanked him back. She got three scratches on his face each drawing blood, before he could escape the woman's grasp. As he ran and ducked into an alleyway, he could still hear the woman screaming.

He didn't know when she stopped. He didn't care. All he cared about was this purse. All he cared about was the money.

When he had found an empty spot in a back alley, he sat and began to rummage through the bag. It contained a lot of traditional womanly things. One tube of lipstick, one bottle of mascara, some foundation, tampons, yeast infection cream, one after another he pulled out items useless to himself. He rummaged through until he could find a wallet. Fifty-five dollars and some small square pictures fell out. He pocketed the money without qualms, but stopped to look at the pictures. 

Both of them were of the same little boy, he couldn't have been older than six. He rummaged through the purse more and found folded papers. He opened them to find crude drawings of small apartments, stick figures, and horses, all in cheap crayon, signed messily with 'Justin'. Further through the papers were to-do lists, receipts, letters from prison, and a letter from a teacher, complaining about her son's performance in school, and his outbursts and violence and other such things that children don't normally do. It was signed in perfect cursive.

He looked at all that sat before him. This woman was a single mother. A single mother with a struggling child. Living in a poor neighborhood. The realization hit Jigen like a truck, filling him with shame.

Fifty-five dollars. He had robbed a poor family, for just fifty-five dollars.

He had never quite felt such an acute sense of self-loathing in his life. It was too much on him. He wanted to cry, but there was nothing; he was dehydrated. He sat on the ground, looking at his dreadful prize, unaware on the presence coming next to him.

"Are you that guy?"

It was a vague question. What the hell was that supposed to mean?

"You know what it means. You can shoot like no one else, can't you?"

Yes, he could.

"Good. I see you've got quick hands, then huh?" said the presence, referring to the purse in front of Jigen's feet. "Stand up, kid." He did. "Look at you. Tall and lanky, eh? Fine enough. How would you like some work?"

Fair enough, but what kind of work was he going to be doing?

"You ask too many questions, kid. You ought to learn to stop that. You can be a bodyguard, for one of the most powerful forces in the mafia: me. What do you say kid?"

If the pay was good, like hell would he pass that up.

"Great. What's your name anyway? How old are you, kid?"

Daisuke Jigen was 16.


End file.
